An Open Letter, Four Years On…

…to the man who thought it might serve his purpose, once I’d outlived my usefulness to him, to portray me–a married woman in my mid-sixties with a dying husband and a recently murdered stepson–on his social media presence, as some sort of maniacal and deranged sex-obsessed stalker who’d forsake her principles, her marriage vows, her family, her fortune, and every aspect of her hard-earned independence and self-sufficiency in order to tie herself publicly to a charming–and very bright–cheater, fabulist, narcissist, and equally married, liar.

This post is for me, and for all those who’ve gone before.  If it’s not of interest to you, stop reading now.

Sometimes it’s not so much age that exposes–or blinds one to–the destructive behavior of others.  Sometimes, it’s simply having led a life which–although replete at regular intervals with its own ghastly tragedies–hasn’t prepared us to recognize those who plot and scheme so viciously that all who stand in the way of their selfish goals, or who don’t go along with their egomaniacal rants, must fall victim to their vainglorious obsessions and to the keening sycophancy and vituperative venom of their slavering JaCkals.  Sometimes we just don’t see it.  Until it’s too late.

I’ve discovered, in the last few years, that I might be in this group, myself.

So.  Slaver away, John, Nancy, Em, Judy, and Liz.  I’ve grown up, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve worked my way through it to the point where I’m no longer moved by your squalid antics, on any of the four websites (That. I. Know. Of.) on which one, or another–or sometimes all–of you have defamed me over the past few years.  You’ve not hesitated to identify me–either as “Ricochet She,” “Rightwingknitjob” or (in the case of at least two of you) by my given name–Louise.

So I don’t mind belatedly returning the favor.

As the third-century (AD) philosopher Sextus Emiricus remarked: ‘The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small.’  That sentiment was later amplified by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Retribution, as follows:

THOUGH the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.

Yep.  Patience.  And although I don’t always enjoy the spectacle when it comes to pass, I’ve become resigned, throughout the course of my life, to waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because, sooner or later, it always does

So, what is it that I see, this many years after the fact, at a point where–if it hasn’t completely hit the ground–the other shoe is at least nearing the substrate?

I see myself embraced, appreciated, and loved, by family and by friends both old and new.  Espousing the same thoughts, values, and ideas I always have. Agreeing, disagreeing, and finding friends online, IRL, and wherever they choose to present themselves.  Happy and content.  Loving, and grateful for my life and the many ways it manifests itself today.  Pretty much–that is to say exactly–as I found myself on November 28, 2017–your 60th birthday–when this peculiar saga began.

How do I see the others in the same equation? Well, my husband died in July 2020 after a beastly decade for the two of us which encompassed both his physical illness and–subsequently–his mental decline.  It was a difficult, difficult time. May he rest forever in peace.  I see the afore-mentioned ghastly tragedy of a stepson who died in July 2018 after a horrific and brutal encounter seven months before with an evil, gender-dysphoric, drug-addled, and mentally compromised duo.  I’m proud to say that–due to my own strength, that of Sam’s sister, and, perhaps above all that of the Pittsburgh Police Detective who took on the case as his own and who followed it through with bulldog-like tenacity–Sam’s murderers went to jail for a long, long, time.  (Sorry if a few of you–who’ve publicly said that you find such sentiments self-serving when I’ve expressed them–disapprove.  Walk in my shoes for a mile or two (something you regularly praise yourselves for doing on behalf of one other), and see if you come to the same conclusion.  LOL. You fucking whited sepulchers.)

I’m only sorry that at least one of the people I’m directing this post towards (a beloved former friend–you know who you are) found it necessary to curry favor with her handler by repeatedly demeaning me and throwing me under the bus at his instruction, even when it came to some of my very personal, heartfelt posts on Ricochet about my experiences (at the same time as she was still pretending dear friendship towards me in our Ricochet exchanges and in our personal emails).  What a fraud (imagine my surprise).  Duplicity, thy name is Nancy.  What an exhibition of two-facedness and hypocrisy. While I understand the pressure you were under (having experienced a bit of it myself), I’m sorry that you folded. All the best in your tragic and miserable life going forward.

I did not fold.  Which (let’s be clear) is why you’ve been defaming me ever since. Live long and prosper, girlfriend.  And don’t make the mistake of thinking that all those you know have forgotten or that they have not seen, and recognized, you for what, and who, you are.

I see–this far on–a very few (perhaps a total  of four?) in the echo chamber that my former friend has invented for himself. They’ve formed a blog on which regular comments occur from the women towards the singular “alpha male” involved along the lines  of “I don’t know how anyone could hate someone as wonderful as you,” or “You are an angel,” and which speak to me of such a “Stepford Wife” or “Liberty Univerity Falwell Jr” vibe that I’m not even sure I can engage usefully in a discussion of it, even here. Bless. I’m not surprised there aren’t more of them, or that those few who–on occasion–took a look, bailed and never reappeared.  (The record will show, if anyone cares to investigate, that I once regularly  instructed my former friend in what it would take to engender a more engaged viewership,   But he’s not interested.  Because, much as he insisted to me that “smart” and “independent” women are what he admires, he’s really only interested in the drooling sycophant vibe.)

Yeah.  Four years on, smart as I believe myself to be, I know I was fooled. Both on the order that I thought my alpha-male friend enjoyed the battle of wits with an appropriately-armed woman, and that he also disregarded the mindless driveling of those moronically lacking those selfsame wits and who fell–quickly–into line with his narcissistic nonsense.

And I’m willing to admit my short-sightedness here.  How about the rest (all four) of you?  LOL.  As if.

When a “happy few” can’t bring themselves to speak truth to, or about,  a man who’s left (at least) two wives, ignores his daughters from all corners of the earth, regularly objectifies his (bought and paid for) girlfriends, publicly defames those women in his life (including–but not limited to–members of his nuclear family) whom he deems insufficiently submissive, and who seems unable to write about much else beside his sense of victimhood and resentment, I think it’s not all that hard to figure out what’s going on. Hint:  Don’t delude yourselves.  You’re not dealing with someone who loves, defends, and enables smart and strong women here.

(If you’re struggling, with this, you might want to check out this short e-book, which helped me immeasurably as I worked my way out from underneath the mess I’d gotten myself into. Pretty dispositive.  I wonder if the two of them used to date?)

So, as promised, here’s my open letter to that person:

Darling former friend:

Four years ago, on November 28, 2017, you expressed a wish to come visit me and Mr. She at our home just outside Claysville PA. Such a matter, and the fact that the request came from you is–unfortunately for you–documented and incontrovertible.  I know the reasons why you had no alternative to visiting here.  You’d either prefer I not disclose those, or perhaps you don’t care.  In any event (h/t and as it relates to former Ricochet member D–J– and Mrs. D–J–), I’m not worried.

I’d like to share with you an indelible memory:

It’s from about 1AM, New Year’s Day, January 1, 2018.  Cold.  And a blizzard.  I’ve driven to Washington PA to find you, after you finally found a rental place that was open on NY Eve, rented a car, and drove from Akron, OH (Wright-Patterson AFB, via several Space-A junkets) to Washington, PA to find me.  I can’t remember the make and model of the car.  It was red.  You were freezing cold, shivering.  You had no coat, no boots, no warm clothes at all.  Fortunately, I’d brought along a winter jacket (it was orange–remember?  (if you don’t remember, I have photos)–of Frank’s, a sweater, some dry socks, and the things I’d knitted because you were arriving so close to Christmas that I wanted to give you a gift, and that’s what I’ve always done for those I love–knitted them clothes to keep them warm.  I’d knitted you a hat, gloves, and a scarf.  A merino/cashmere blend.  Nice yarn.  Soft.  A dark green.

I wonder where those things are now. LOL.

Meeting you for the first time, in the freezing cold and pelting snow, I gave you a hug.  That seemed to surprise you.  Then you bundled yourself up in the clothes I’d brought you, got back in the car, and followed me home.

That night, over a couple of belts of Laphroaig to warm us up (the only time you drank while you were staying with us) you told me about Chareema, about your plans, and about how you might take her to Chile when you’d had enough of Thailand.  You showed me photos of the two of you. I was happy for you.  You said you might have babies with her.  And over the next couple of months, while you were living here, I encouraged you, if you thought she was the “one” to spend time with her and just make sure you were right for each other.  Meanwhile, I offered to correspond with her to help her improve her English, and I knitted her a pretty scarf.  (all this is, unfortunately from your end, documented from mine.) Much else about your lengthy time spent living with my husband and me–including how much he loved your company and–despite his severely compromised mental state– often asked about your welfare after you’d left us (you rotten bastard) can be found in this post.

Also equally unfortunately, you seemed ambivalent, I heard some nasty exchanges between the two of you while you were living in my house, and by the time you left–at the end of  two months living with Frank and me–to go back to Thailand, you were saying it was over between you, as you called her a liar, and a two-timer, and some other things besides. I believed you.  I also know, and remember, some of the other things you said to me.

It took me quite some time to understand that the dynamic you like with women–at least with smart, assertive women whose brains and abilities threaten you, while their physical attributes cannot–is a violent one.  I can’t speak to whether there’s physical violence involved, but you certainly do  like verbal violence–lies, insults, and destructive fantasies; and the rallying of your small band of JaCkals in triumphant pursuit of your quarry.  You want that in relationships in which you feel the need to exert dominance over your partner lest you be shown up for the insecure and inadequate little man you perceive yourself to be.  (That’s also why you seek out meek, compliant women whose services you pay for, BTW.  That’s about control, too.  If they’re dependent on you for their very livelihood, if not their actual existence, then they can’t get too uppity with you, can they?)

Somewhere during those two months you lived with us, I learned that you were, in fact, still married. Something I didn’t know for sure, because it never occurred to me to try to find out, and it never occurred to me to ask you.  I figured you’d tell me your story in your own good time.  As you did.  (I remember your saying that I was one of the few women you’d ever met who’d never asked you what it was like to kill someone.  I asked you if I should have done, and that you could talk about it if you liked.  You said, no.  That you liked the fact that I didn’t pry.)  So funny, in light of what you’ve said since about my stalking you.  Even funnier, when I recall listening, ad nauseam, to Nancy’s recounting of her efforts to discover you on Twitter, and Facebook, and her desperate PMs to other Ricochet members to find out about you every time you disappeared from the site.  Not to mention (again), her gossipy stories about “Mrs. Mac,” (I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, so I never encouraged her in such talk), and your Kelli’s wedding.  And all the rest of it–from the old days–of course.  I’ll use the last remaining bit of feminine modesty that’s left to me after a few years of living in what–if it were a Paddy Chayefsky screenplay–might be called The Americanization of She, to draw a veil over that part.  So funny that you label me “the stalker,” when–actually–there’s another who deserves that moniker far more than I.  And–in our own relationship–when the record shows that I was never so much the pursuer, as I was the pursued.

Over the rest of 2018, I began to see the drama-queen in you, and that part of your nature requires you to invent conflicts with women close to you, so that you have opportunities to subdue, and hurt, and overcome them.  And that when a person who isn’t a drama queen and who doesn’t enjoy that sort of conflict refuses to play along with your plans for a War of the Roses dynamic and calls you on your shenanigans, you turn ever nastier, even as you seek out and form new bonds with new, supportive, submissive and sycophantic trolls.

Chareema fit the drama-queen bill (“explosive!!”) and enjoyed sexually-charged fireworks with you, and she had an appropriately vulnerable background–from very poor and desperate circumstances, treated badly by her father–as well as a hi-so cachet--Law Clerk–as you repeatedly and publicly told everyone, as though, somehow, her status there conferred some sort of favor on you.  So foolish.  So delusional. So sad, that you think so little of yourself and have to assume a status based either on your superiority  over those you hang out with–the mentally unstable or the physically incapacitated–or that you think you take on the elite characteristics of your group–the hi-so, those of (supposed) wealth, or those who are highly educated–and that somehow being with those people confers some sort of cachet on you.  Although I know for my own part, and fitting in some of those groups myself, that the cachet lasts only as long as the sycophancy or the dependency.  God help any of those women if she, or they, ever decide to challenge you, LOL.

Regarding Chareema, you used her, on several occasions, to try to set up some sort of jealous triangle you could exploit with me.  Which is why, in the middle of my asking you what the hell you were playing at, and why you were treating me like shit, you’d say things like “Chareema  just called.  She misses me and wants to talk.”  Just as you tried to triangulate me into the Ninoosha situation, first by badmouthing her to me, and then by insisting that I speak to her while she was staying with you.  Nitty told me that you subsequently dropped Ninoosha like a rock, and she was pretty traumatized.  Typical of your behavior, I now understand.  Only wish I’d seen through it at the time, instead of defending you like the fool I was. Later, you’d do the same thing with Judy, stringing her along and enticing her into attacking me–just as you’ve done with Nancy, Liz, and even, on occasion, Em, who ought to have more sense.  I see you doing it today, as the girls struggle to outdo each other in fawning adulation.  My dearest hope is that the only one of them who has a family with a future finds it, and that she moves on to more important things in her life.  The rest of them, I’m afraid, are pretty much at a dead end.

But I didn’t know anything of what was to come, when you told me some of your story in the wee hours of January 1, 2018–the year you “first-footed” yourself into my home. That night, I was just happy for you.  And pleased for my friend.

A few days later, when we were going out for one of our many lovely walks, you donned your hat, scarf and gloves and said “someone who loves me made these for me.”  I smiled and said, “That’s right.  I like to keep the people I love snug and warm.”

How horribly you repaid my real and genuine affection.  By ridiculing, mocking, embarrassing, and humiliating me in front of my friends, as you engaged, on multiple websites,  in repeated and lengthy outbursts of very public character assassination, using any means necessary, including lies, exaggeration, the ruin of IRL and virtual friendships, betrayal of confidences, and repeated defamation and denigration of my motives, my integrity, my honor, my adherence to my marital vows, and your supposed “fear” that I’d injure (or worse) my terminally-ill husband just to further my chances of having sex with you

Ugh.  You ignored any and all pleas on my part that you should stop.  And you showed your “respect for women” by simply doubling down, projecting what I’m pretty sure you know is your own unfaithful, duplicitous, and disgraceful behavior onto me and then shaming me for it publicly.  You’re the person who should be ashamed, Simon/John.

And, in the spirit of the long view, I hope that one day, you will be.  That is your only road to salvation and redemption.

I’ll never really know the moment you “turned.”  And I’ve pretty much written your behavior off as that of a damaged and dysfunctional malignant narcissist.  You check so many of the boxes for the condition that it’s a pretty unassailable premise. (Another indelible memory–that the first person I ever knew who applied the world “malignant” to your character was your friend Judy.  I defended you when she did.  Silly me.)

But I think you were well on your way to throwing me under the bus by the time I got to Thailand, having already decided that my usefulness to you had run its course; that there were far more interesting and vulnerable fish available in the sea for you to prey on; that you could use them to turn your relationship with me into just the sort of dumpster fire you love; and that their attentions and flattery were–due to general stupidity, cupidity, and desperation–far more to your liking, because you deemed them unlikely to–on occasion–stand up to you or express an independent or contradictory thought.  And I daresay you thought it better to start afresh before the person who “knows [you] better than anyone else” (your words) began to put two-and-two together for herself or even, God forbid, got so close that she might have found out some more home truths about you. And before she spilled the goods–so, in anticipation of that event (one I’d never have brought to fruition on my own–semper fi), you decided to make the first move.

And so–starting in October of 2018, five full months before I said a word in public about our friendship, you began to defame and destroy me–publicly–in front of our mutual friends on the Internet.  What a loathsome cad, and a liar, you proved yourself to be.

I’m only grateful that I can look at this so clinically and so clearly now, and that thinking about you no longer hurts or disturbs me.  I’ll always regret that a person I trusted so completely, and had so much affection for showed himself to be so unworthy, but–as the children say–WHATEVER.  I know you’re not typical of your sex, your station, your rank (there are more USMC LtCols in the sea than ever came out of it, LOL), or your age.  At least, your chronological age.  And so I move on, to  a more pleasant and fortunate space in my life.

I wish you as much contentment and happiness as I’ve found for myself over the past few months, MVSG.

X

PS: Another, equally likely theory, just in case the “malignant narcissist” one doesn’t pan out (unlikely; I think it’s pretty solid):  Remember what I used to say to you?  I do.  I used to say, “Find a nice girl, and then write and tell me how much you love her, how much fun you have with her, how you love talking to her and going places with her, how interesting she is, how special you feel when you’re with her, how you love meeting her family and friends.  Don’t just tell me there’s this girl who means nothing to you other than as a blowjobber or a contortionist, or for her ability to make other men who see you together jealous, or to look desirable sitting across the table from you in the restaurant at the golf course, or to look cute in your bed.  Find a friend.  And then see if she turns into a lover. Do that, and I’ll know she’s good enough for you, and I’ll be happy for you.”  Remember that?  I do.  LOL.

I think you’re shit-scared of that sort of relationship with another human being.  I can’t tell you why.  A shrink would have a field day with it, possibly starting with childhood fears of abandonment. (Whether or not that’s the case, that’s regularly where shrinks start out when dealing with people who are terrified of commitment, as you are, my friend.  In any event, I suspect what’s wrong with you goes much deeper and further back than military PTSD).

And I think that same fear is also a very valid and possible explanation for your precipitous exit from my life, and that of many others you’ve loved in one way or another over the years.  If one of us was going to abandon the other, you made very sure it was you abandoning me.  Before I found out something (else) discreditable about you and threw you under the bus myself.  Because others who’ve said so have been right–you think so little of yourself, you have only contempt for those of us who love someone you despise–for those of us who love you.  I could make a list, but you probably don’t need me to, because you know who we are.

When it comes right down to it, I think I’ll just embrace the power of AND:  You’re a malignant narcissist, AND you despise the women who really love you AND you fear abandonment so you push people away when you think you are getting too close to them.  I think that about covers it.

Sad that you won’t get some help and sort yourself out so you can resume normal relations with those who should be closest to you.  (Of course, I am not talking about myself.)  But, as usual, you seek out bad advice, which–when you find it–bolsters your insatiable craving for flattery and perks up  your aging dick, and which sticks to you like flypaper and drags you further into the abyss.

And so, WRT that bottomless abyss of venom, spite, misery, victimhood and hatred that you live, with those I think of as Lucy, Ethel, Miranda Priestly, and Mommie Dearest, while everything good in the world passes you by:

I wish you the very best, MVSG.

Enjoy the sludge.

YOAOSWACS

PS: For all you nitwits who–he’s led to–believe that I was stalking the man who calls himself–among many others online–Simon Templar, please take a moment to consider how or why this person ended up at my farm in Claysville PA in the early hours of January 1, 2018.  Not something I inveigled, managed or otherwise set up.  How could I have?  There are millions of places in the US he could have visited.  And (even on Ricochet) thousands of homes he could have targeted.  He, a person who, during our first of several hundred–and over a thousand hours of–telephone calls  starting on January 17, 2017 said he’d always been taught to view women as “targets of opportunity,” used me as such a one.  And–to my eternal shame–I let him.

Because–let’s be clear, in January 2018, there wasn’t anywhere else he could stay.  Not with his wife.  Not with his daughters.  Not with his brothers.  Not with his mother.  Not with other friends.

Otherwise, how the hell did he end up with us??

Go figure,  world.

And when you’ve come up with a better answer than I can (narcissistic stalker with a vulnerable “target of opportunity” in his sights), I’ll be delighted to hear what it is,